Doki Doki Literature Club!

Part of starting Derian’s Media Corner that I’ve been most excited about is giving myself an excuse to experience internet cornerstones and classic pieces of media. These vary from the 1955 novel Lolita to the album Bat Out of Hell, and somewhere on that spectrum lies a video game that many recognize. In fact, I’d say this game is a backbone for the entire genre of games known as visual novels. This genre is one that I’ve never tried out, and I’m glad about that because it gave me the opportunity to make

Doki Doki Literature Club! my first visual novel. 

Doki Doki Literature Club! is a game that I would consider to be a cornerstone of internet gaming. It’s a visual novel that takes itself more seriously than one would expect, and has a couple of clever twists that can suck anyone playing it into its world. This is a game where we play as a surrogate of ourselves trying to become a member of this literature club filled with cute anime characters. The music is cutesy, the setting is a classic cute Japanese high school, and these characters all have their own unique charm(be it tropey or not). Although it plays its hand a bit too strong for my liking, I can understand how anyone playing could fall in love with the vibe that this game is giving, and the characters that you can spend time with. 

This is apparently very standard for romance visual novels(I wouldn’t know for certain), but that doesn’t make it feel boring or uninteresting. I was actually having a pretty enjoyable time with this early section of the game, even with the strange poems that Monika would write, Sayori becoming more distant from me even though she was my best friend, and other uncomfortable aspects. These moments were clearly intentional while being super meta for a visual novel, and those with keen media literacy will pick up on a lot of the hints the game is dropping in the early game. If DDLC! wasn’t playing its opening hand so strongly with the cutesy act, I would’ve never seen the horror twists that this game reveals.

I’ve never been much of a gamer, but I’ve played a handful of horror games and a handful of games with meta elements. However, this is a game that is wholly unique as it uses meta elements to create its horror, along with some great over the top and intense visuals. Those who are vulnerable to explicit content and get easily attached to characters should stay away from this game, because all of these girls succumb to terrible fates no matter what you do as the player. This is a game that is willing to delve into the minds of characters that have been mentally broken due to their reality being nothing but a game to the real world. 

I was thoroughly impressed by the writing in this game more than anything else. Depicting mental illness in a way that’s over the top without it feeling like a joke is not something I see pulled off all that often. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that this game is a character study on tropey characters, but it’s definitely worth investing time and thought into. 

Since this game is one with many pathlines, I’d like to do a quick spoiler discussion on my first playthrough of the game. Honestly, I have no idea how to discuss this game without including spoilers, but I’ll do my best to be brief. 

Anytime I’ve spoken to somebody about DDLC! their first question is always, “so who did you romance?”. Out of the main four girls, there were really only two choices that I would even consider. Monika, the perfect popular school girl, terrified me to the core and was a bit too perfect for me to be comfortable around. Natsuki was far too cutesy, small, and aggressive for me to ever want to spend my time with, so that only really left me with the other two. Sayori, the upbeat extroverted best friend, and Yuri, the reserved and mature girl, were the ones I would be spending my time with. 

I was almost immediately on my toes within the first 20 minutes of this game as I knew it was trying too hard to get me comfortable. In particular, I could not drop my guard around Monika as she gave me the same goosebumps that Makima from Chainsaw Man gives me. I knew some weird stuff was about to go down, and she would be the mastermind behind it. All of those warnings were made true once we started sharing our poems. Monika’s poem was far more cryptic than the others, and mentioned ideas of being trapped away from the one she loves as he looks at her through something akin to a screen. I’ve never been one to overlook dialogue and visual/audio cues in media as I think everything that goes into a creation is there for a purpose. After reading that poem, I became firm in my belief that Monika was not to be trusted. 

While the poem sharing section was off putting, it did give me the opportunity to get closer to Yuri. From that point onward, she became my main focus until I started to notice that Sayori was beginning to get distant due to how much time I was spending with the others. It’s pretty obvious all these girls have a crush on you, but how they responded to not getting romanced is what I found to be most interesting. Out of the three I wasn’t romancing, Sayori was the only one to get a noticeably sad reaction. I decided to try and spend more time with her moving forward after seeing that outcome because it really made me sad seeing the happiest girl in the game become depressed. This goal got immediately shattered however as I discovered one of the only flaws in this game. 

No matter how hard I tried there would never be a happy outcome for Sayori. I understand that her death is the turning point of the game, but I get to spend way more time with any other character than I do with her. It made me quite upset to find out that DDLC! didn’t provide as much freedom in its paths as I thought it would. I never enjoy being railroaded into a story, but I still decided to see it through to the end. 

Walking into Sayori’s bedroom and seeing her hanging right after having a huge emotional moment with her a couple minutes before was heartbreaking more than it was horrifying. The game had actually done a fake out scene for a concept like that a couple minutes before that as well, so when the same sequence started to repeat I knew I had lost her for certain. Aside from the feeling of getting railroaded, I thought the Sayori death was well done and did a great job at making me upset in the way the creators were aiming for. 

With Sayori gone and the game finally revealing itself to be more than just a romancing visual novel I no longer felt the need to take its romance section so seriously. I’ll admit, it did a much better job at trying to trick me into forgetting about Sayori than expected, but it was always in the back of my mind. No matter what I would do moving forward, these girls were never going to survive. The only possible exception being Monika, as I felt she had to be behind it all. Now my goal was to see how this all plays out, and I think that ended up being my best course of action. 

Due to my previous attempts to open up the path to romancing Yuri, I quickly assumed that she would be next in line to die. As I spent more time with her, she began to get more suspicious, obsessive, and worrying. This didn’t feel as bad as Sayori’s mental spiral, but it was more interesting with how it made me upset.

For starters, she understood that her issues were stemming from something that wasn’t herself. Her understanding made me believe that she felt so close, yet so far, to being aware about her existence being in a game. 

Secondly, the visuals that occurred during her obsessive scenes were maybe the most uncomfortable part of the game. In particular, I adored the use of real human eyes being incorporated into her art during the up close and personal scenes. It was genuinely unsettling and entirely unique compared to anything else in the game. The other visual trick I liked during Yuri’s demise was how long we stayed focused on her during her worst moments. The scenes would just linger a little longer than I had gotten used to, and that made all the difference in making me feel out of my element. Being forced to sit with her corpse for minutes on end after she met her fate was just the dead cherry on top(compliment). 

Something I found really entertaining was watching Natsuki become aware of Yuri’s mental condition and her becoming scared of Monika. She too was noticing that the situations they were ending up in made no sense to what they were used to. I really wanted to spend more time with a meta Natsuki, but that’s not what the game had planned. Almost instantly after Yuri’s death occurred, Natsuki was deleted from the game. Finally, Monika reveals herself to be the one in control of all the strange happenings in this game. 

Monika being aware that she was in a game was something I figured out early on, but that didn’t make it feel any less powerful. I wouldn’t say I felt scared throughout this sequence, but I was definitely satisfied by all the great writing that was put into Monika(and the game in general). I actually spent a lot of time just letting her various dialogues go on as I enjoyed the self discussion she was forcing me to sit through. Her mindset of creating a perfect self, place, and situation to keep me from ever wanting to leave was so interesting, and that mindset turning into an obsession was something I hadn’t seen before in other meta pieces of media. 

Even though Monika was a villain I still felt bad anytime I turned the game off, came back, and had her describe the empty void of death that she experiences every time I’m not on DDLC!. When it came time to delete her from the game, I felt like I was having to crush somebody that was just trying their best to make the most out of their meaningless life. I’m glad things ended how they did, but if only there had been a chance for everyone to be friends and enjoy some time at the literature club.

I had a lot of missteps and disagreements with how things occurred during my first playthrough of Doki Doki Literature Club!, but never anything that made it a bad experience. It feels nice to have completed my first visual novel, and it feels even better that it was a classic of the genre. I enjoyed my time with this game and would recommend it to anyone who’s not squeamish towards self mutilation. It’s a quick game that most people can make time for no matter how busy their schedule. This was a solid experience and I look forward to coming back to this game at some point as I understand there is more to it on a second playthrough than the first.